III. Capitalism and Social Ideas

In socialist circles one frequently hears that evolution will supply the solution to the social question, that one cannot express opinions and then expect them to be put into practice. This must be answered as follows: Certainly evolution must supply the necessary social adjustments; but in the social organism the impulses behind human ideas are realities. When the times are more advanced and what today can only be thought is realized, only then will what has been thought be contained in evolution. However, it will then be too late to accomplish what is already demanded by today's events. It is not possible to consider evolution objectively as regards the social organism. One must activate evolution. It is therefore disastrous for sound social thinking that current opinion desires to ‘prove’ social necessities in the same way that natural science ‘proves’ things. ‘Proof’, as far as social conceptions are concerned, can only be attained if one's views can assimilate not only what exists now, but also what is present in human impulses as potentiality striving to be realized.